Daily Archives: April 29th, 2007

Today’s Saturday Sky isn’t just the sky, it’s the squeal inducing sight I saw this morning when I climbed out of bed:

To understand why I squealed, I have to back up a bit, to Tuesday.

A fast moving, strong snowstorm went through on Tuesday. The storm started with ice pellets falling from the sky for several hours and this morphed into 50+mph winds and several inches of heavy, wet snow. During the storm, my power went out and I looked out my window to see a power pole snapped in two:

Power outages are common where I live so I had prepared by filling my washing machine with water and turning up the heat in the house.

When I saw the power pole was snapped, I knew I was in trouble. Once the storm cleared and ushered in warm, sunny weather, I discovered that at least five power poles right about my house were snapped and over 150 poles in my area had suffered the same fate.

This was not going to be the usual 4-6 hour power outage. I expected it to be about as long as the longest power outage I had ever experienced here: 26 hours.

I was wrong. So very wrong.

My power went out Tuesday afternoon. It did not come back on until late Saturday afternoon. For those of you keeping track at home, my power was off for 98 hours.

98 hours with no electricity, no heat and no running water.

The lack of heat was only a problem the first day. I spent Night One shivering underneath five blankets while wearing a sweatsuit, wool socks and fuzzy feet.

The lack of running water was a pain, but wasn’t that big of a deal. I keep ten gallons of drinking water in the house at all times and while I did make a Wal*Mart run on Day Two for more water and batteries, the critters and I probably could have survived on those ten gallons. I used the water in the washing machine to flush the toilet, so I just missed showering and washing my hair.

The lack of electricity bothered me a lot for the first day or so. I’m a news junkie and am always checking the cable news channels and websites to see what’s going on in the world. When I knit, I’m always watching TV, surfing the Internet, emailing and IM’ing at the same time. After a day without these distractings, I settled into a relaxing new routine.

I took time during the day to sit on my deck and watch the birds play in the trees. When the sun had set in the evening I didn’t immediately pull the curtains and turn on the lights. I kept the curtains open until the last drop of daylight had been squeezed from the sky.

I started with the Socks of Spring, but they didn’t hold my interest for long:

I was in a heel turning mood one night and turned four heels:

Finally, I cast on for the socks I’ve been thinking about for about a month:

I’m amazed at how much I can knit when I focus on just the knitting. It was a nice change to knit only to the soft snoring of dogs and when I felt the need to hear noise, I caught up on the many podcasts that have been languishing on my iPod.

I’m happy to be back in the 21st century, but I’m grateful for the time I had to slow down and appreciate everything around me.